George Packer: Egalitarian Intellectualism

At Interesting Times, George Packer urges Obama to channel historian Richard Hofstadter in his battle with conservatism:

Obama’s task is to reject their anti-intellectualism, which is related to political populism of the right-wing variety, without falling into the trap of sounding and acting like the self-righteous liberal weakling they imagine or want him to be. (After his first press conference, conservative pundits mocked him for being “professorial,” when Obama had simply done what his predecessor never did: explain himself to the American people.) He has to remind Americans what egalitarianism should be: not a Palin campaign rally, but the birthright of every American and the glue that holds the national community together.